Bicycles move
With the flow
Of the earth
Like a cloud
So quiet
In the October sky
Like licking ice cream
From a cone
Like knowing you
Will always
Be there
--Nikki Giovanni, "Bicycles"
I’m a big believer in having a destination on a gravel ride. It doesn’t have to be anything special--a country store, an onion-domed Orthodox church, a shaded picnic spot, a viewpoint. A plaque even. I’ll gladly ride to a random plaque and back.
On a recent foray, setting out from Kinsella, in east central Alberta, we settled on the Viking Ribstones, an historical site I’d read about online. Ribstones are big old rocks with shapes or lines (specifically lines that look kind of like an animal’s rib cage) carved into them a long time ago by Indigenous people. It’s thought that the carvings were a kind of offering to the spirit of Old Man Buffalo. Apparently nine different ribstone sites have been found in Alberta, but the one near Viking is one of the better preserved specimens.
I recently spent a couple of days exploring some of the off-pavement
options in the Neutral Hills in east-central Alberta, near Consort, and I can
report that even though I only rode a fraction of it, this area has lots of
potential for adventurous gravel cyclists.
We camped at Gooseberry Lake Provincial Park, about 15 km
north of Consort, which turns out to be a great starting point for cycling. To
the south and east, it’s your typical prairie gravel roads, all fine and well,
but to the north and west things get interesting. The hilly terrain reminds me
of another Alberta terminal moraine, the Porcupine Hills area near
Claresholm--similar topography and similar “roads,” if that’s even the right
word. The hills are bestrewn with totally bikeable tracks and trails, most of
them private but some of them public.
These days
Burton’s name isn’t widely known outside of Britain, but the career numbers she
accumulated are astonishing--for any sport. From the mid 1950s to the 1980s,
she won 90 domestic championships and 7 world titles; for 25 consecutive years
she was the Best All Round female time trialist in Britain; her 100-mile record
lasted 28 years and her 12-hour record an incredible 50 years. At her peak, she
regularly beat some of the best British male cyclists in time trials--including
eight-time Tour de France stage winner Barry Hoban. Her 1967 12-hour time-trial
distance (277 miles) stood for two years before it was bested by a male
cyclist.
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| Credit: Cycling Tips |
A few years ago, Val, Penn, and I did the Gran Fondo Whistler. It was, I thought at the time, an expensive ticket: $225 to participate in a one-day ride. But despite being a cheap bastard by nature, I was able to justify the cost on the grounds that for my cash I was getting a unique “experience:” in addition to the usual supports (aid and snack stations) a section of the highway we rode was closed to car traffic, enabling us to ride on a road that otherwise I probably would have avoided. And when we got to Whistler, there was a party waiting for us: barbeque, live music, and an atmosphere of general festivity. We had a good time. It was worth it, and I’d recommend the “experience.”
That ride is all pavement, of course, but I mention it here because, in the world of gravel riding, big ticket events promising a special “experience”--in some cases charging the same kind of fees as a premier event like the Whistler Gran Fondo--are beginning to pop up more and more in western Canada. But when I look closely at what some of these gravel events are offering in exchange for their fees, I find myself asking some questions about what exactly constitutes a rewarding gravel-event “experience.”
David Lamb’s Over the Hills: A Midlife Escape Across America by Bicycle (1996) is one of the better examples of the mid-life-crisis-bike-trip travel book that started to pop up in the 1980s and 90s and has become a subgenre all its own.
Lamb was the same age I am now (54) when he found himself not in a crisis exactly, but feeling “tiresomely reliable and responsible,” “normal to a fault,” he says. He hadn’t ridden a bike more than a few miles in decades, but he decided that a “foolhardy” cycling adventure from Virginia to California might just be the ticket to reconnecting with some of his roguish youth and getting out of a rut.
Late January is usually the time of year when I start scheming cycling plans for once the snow’s gone. As the days get incrementally longer, I find I can allow myself to begin dreaming of green fields and short sleeves--even if they’re still many months away.
This year, of course, any planning must take into account the COVID restrictions that are likely to be with us into the summer if not longer. In fact, with the prospect of variants in our midst, there’s every chance that the coming months will see lockdowns and movement restrictions unlike anything we’ve seen so far, at least here in Alberta.
But I can still scheme, even if I have to accept that I may end up doing most of these rides by myself, if at all. Strange as it sounds, I get a lot of pleasure simply from the plan-making itself--regardless of whether any of them come to fruition. So here’s my list of wanna-do’s for 2021:
I confess I’ve never read Alexandre Dumas’s beloved series of Musketeer books. I’ve known of them, of course, from when I was kid, having watched--numerous times--the 1973 movie version of The Three Musketeers featuring Michael York (D’Artagnan), Raquel Welch (Constance), and Charlton Heston (Cardinal Richelieu). The movie--as I remember it--was fun, a bit racy, full of adventure, romance, floppy hats, silly facial hair, and, of course, sword fights. Lots of sword fights. So I’m familiar with the general idea of the franchise, though I’m certainly no Musketeers nerd. At least I wasn’t until a few months ago.
